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Is Snopes pushing Adware? Urban legend or fact?

Claim: The popular urban legend debunking site Snopes is pushing Adware on to its readers.Status: True (No longer true since their shaming from Alex Eckelberry and this blog on 1/28/2008).
Written by George Ou, Contributor

Claim: The popular urban legend debunking site Snopes is pushing Adware on to its readers.

Status: True (No longer true since their shaming from Alex Eckelberry and this blog on 1/28/2008).

Origins: Blogger Adrian W Kingsley-Hughes pointed out this post from Alex Eckelberry of Sunbelt reporting how Snopes is pushing Zango Adware.  Apparently it's 1 of 2 popups that Snopes runs and the other popup is some sort of "registry cleaner" according to Eckelberry.  I checked the site myself and confirmed the Zango popup and Eckelberry says it's been there for at least six months and that Snopes has ignored him all this time.

Zango CTO Keith Smith responded with his own blog including talkback comments here at Zero Day.  Alex Eckelberry posted this response.  I appears that the pressure from Eckelberry's blog with the help of Zero Day has pressured Snopes in to dropping the Zango Adware ads.

Last updated: 3 February 2008

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